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MR. ALLEN'S REPORT 



OF A 



DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS 



ON 



SLAVERY 



DEC. 5, 1837. 



SECOND EDITION. 



n^l 



WORCESTER: 
PRINTED BY HENRY J. ROWLAND. 

18 3 8. 



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*^l 



MR. ALLEN'S REPORT 



A 



OF A 




DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS 



ON 



SLAVERY 



DEC. 5, 183 7. 



WORCESTER: 
PRINTED BY HENRY J. ROWLAND. 

18 38. 



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NOTE. /'J 

i ^1 -^ ^' ^ 

The following pages contain the Report, by Mr. Allen of Shre^Rfbury, ^ i 
to a Committee of the Convention of Ministers of different denominations^ - 
in the County of Worcester, called together to express their sentmients'^ 
on the subject of Slavery. With slight amendments it was reported by# 
said Committee to the Convention. After a protracted discussion, the. ^ 
Report was indefinitely postponed, it being ascertained that its harmo-. 
nioiis adoption could not be expected. ^^ 



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; 



.r. 



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T. 



The undersigned, ministers of different denominations in the 
County of Worcester and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, called 
together to express our sentiments on the subject of Slavery, after 
careful and solemn deliberation, publish the following as the Decla- 
ration of our sentiments on that subject. 

We offer no definition of slavery. It has been so long before the 
public, it has been so separate in the minds of all thinking men from 
every thing else, it is so little liable to be misunderstood, and it being 
as easy to cavil at a definition as at a fact, we prefer leaving the 
sense in which we use the word, to be understood by the connec- 
tion in which it shall be found, stating, however, that if, to any 
mind, there may seem cases which are not carefully distinguished 
by us, our business is not with particular, but general facts : with 
rules and not with exceptions ; with principles and not with 

anomalies. 

In publishing, as in forming, our opinions on slavery, we disclaim 
all bias for political party, or religious sect ; all pei-sonal or sec- 
tional enmity or jealousy : and we avow that the opinions we have 
formed are careful, strong, and solemn convictions of right and 
wrong, of danger and safety, and that the publication of these opin- 
ions is from a similar conviction of duty. 



4 

We are not insensible to the difficulties which encircle, and 
which are interwoven with the subject of slavery ; nor would we 
wantonly bring others to a fearful contemplation of them ; but, 
believing that there is no evil so great as sin, and no remedy for 
evil so certain as duty, we would speak the truth in love, and 
wound only with the faithfulness of friends. 

We attach not great importance to our solitary opinions of 
slavery, nor flatter ourselves, that, alone, we shall be heeded by 
those whom we would gladly move to duty, and whose welfare we 
have much at heart. Our hope is only to mingle our humble 
voice with the roar of that mighty flood of public sentiment which 
shall, at length, roll down upon the sin of slavery, and wash out 
its stain from our country and our race. 

To any who may question the propriety of publishing our sen- 
timents on the subject of slavery, we would say, — On such a 
subject we cannot but think, and, thinking, we cannot but feel. 
To stifle the voice of nature would be to vex and to destroy those 
sympathies which a beneficent Creator has stationed in the human 
bosom for the safety of the human race. — We speak because 
sin, and, especially, inveterate and wide-spread sin, is a headlong, 
and not a self-converting power. — We open our mouths for the 
dumb ; because the voice of God within us, and v/ithout us, 
solemnly enjoins this duty. — We speak not only for the oppressed, 
but for the oppressor, that he may have the benefit of repentance, 
and escape the evils which sin lays up in store for the trans- 
gressor. — We speak because to be neutral is both against our 
will and beyond our power ; — because not to act against known 
sin, when God gives the opportunity, is to connive at it, and to be 
an accomplice in its perpetration. On the solemn question now 
abroad in our land, of human rights, duties, and sufferings, to 
allow men to mistake or doubt our sentiments is to betray those 
rights, to deny those duties, and to inflict those sufferings. — We 
speak because we believe in the power of public sentiment when 



spoken ; and because it is the duty of all men to create that 
power. — We speak because slavery is not a concern foreign from 
«s. As men we respect the rights and feel the wrongs of men. 
The enslaved are men, and with them we claim alliance, by au- 
thority of Him who hath made us all of one blood. Whilst we 
have duties in a limited sphere, we have duties beyond that sphere. 
As the religion we receive and teach was given to bless mankind, 
it teaches us to spread its truths as far as the providence of God 
allows us to reach our fellow men. This revealed duty no human 
wisdom can legislate off our consciences. Those natural ties are 
strengthened, this general duty is pressed more forcibly on us, by 
the position in which we are placed. The sentiments to which we 
give utterance, regarding, generally, our race, regard, especially, 
our countrymen, both bond and free. It is not only their manhood 
that asks for our voice, it is their nearness : — it is the relation in 
which they stand to us and we to them as component parts of the 
same nation : — it is the solemn and evident truth, that the char- 
acter, destiny, and responsible inlluence of our whole country 
depend on the freedom, the intelligence, the virtue, the enjoyed 
rights and practised duties of every part of our country. 

Placing our reliance on the might, the wisdom, and the good- 
ness of God, we speak, because his appointed means to convince 
of sin, and turn men from it ; to teach them their danger, and the 
way to escape it, is, the proclamation of truth by man. — We 
speak, because the sin, which is already so great and so alarming, 
is, every day, growing greater, and spreading its baleful influence 
more visibly over our whole country ; and because, unless a voice 
is soon, and from every quarter, loudly uttered against it, its power 
and its curse will, ere long, be too great to be opposed with hope 
of success, and its existence will never end, but by its own aveng- 
ing arm. — We speak to remove a nation's sin, and to forestall a 
nation's doom. — We speak that our country, purified from its 
great defilement, may hold out a brighter light to other nations, 



and that the present ago may work a greater good to the ages tliat 
shall come after it. 

We speak as ministers, ministers of Him who said, " The Spirit 
of the Lord God is upon me, p.ecause he hath sent me to bind up 
the broken-hearted — to proclaim liberty to the captives — and the 
opening of the prison to them that are bound," and because if we 
have not tlie Spirit of Christ we are none of his. — We speak as 
ministers, because the public eye looks upon us, and the public 
ear waits for our voice ; — because, in the stations we occupy, we 
have high advantages for enlightening the public mind, and guiding 
the public will ; and because a neglect of these advantages is a be- 
trayal of a solemn trust. 

We speak together, that, after united counsel, the voice of every 
one may give strength to the voice of every other ; and that the 
united proclamation of our sentiments may swell the note which our 
brethren, in other parts of our country and of the world, are lifting 
up against the sin which most of all dishonors, corrupts and endan- 
gers our country. 

Would that the intelligence and the moral sense of our nation, 
on the subject of human rights and obligations, were correct ; then 
had we been spared the humiliation of an apology for doing that 
to which God has oriven his sanction in the nature of man, and in 
the written record of his will. 

Having stated our reasons for speaking our sentiments on the 
subject of slavery, we proceed to utter those sentiments. 

We regard slavery as the most comprehensive sin which man 
commits against man. Disregarding the first and great command- 
ment, it breaks the entire mass of the second. It is an invasion on 
the whole man — on all his powers, rights, enjoyments, and hopes. 
It annihilates his being as a man, to make room for the being of a 
THING. It robs him of himself, to make him the property of an- 
other. 

His body, that building fearfully and wonderfully made, is not 



HIS. All that makes it, and all that dwells in it, is claimed, held, 
used, bought, and sold, as another's. 

Property he has none. He cannot acquire it; he cannot 
inherit it ; and, therefore, he cannot own it. Ilinjself a chattel, 
like other chattels, he is owned, but not an owner, Not a man, but 
a machine, an implement of toil, a tool of husbandry. 600, 000, 
square miles are his to till, but not a foot of all that wide domain is 
his to own. No house, not even the wretched cabin where to-night 
he stretches his weary bones, is his home. To-morrow's light may 
rise upon him a chained pilgrim to an unknown, far, and friendless 
land. Even in the grave, the house appointed for all living, he has 
no certain dwelling place. 

No PRODUCE OF HIS TOIL is his. He planteth a vineyard, and 
eateth not of the fruit thereof. He feedeth a flock, and eateth not 
of the milk of the flock. He beareth the heat and burthen ot the 
day, not to eat in the sweat of his brow, his bread, but the crumbs 
that fall from a master's table. 

The ties of home bind not him. That original law, inscribed 
deep in the nature of man, " For this cause shall a man — cleave to 
his wife," — this law to which such might is given, to keep the 
world from being a wilderness, and to save it from the ferocity of 
man, is shattered and dissolved throughout the dominion of slavery. 

The offspring of the slave are not his. They are owned by an- 
other. A father's strength may not protect them ; a mother's love 
may not lead and solace them. They are bred for the shambles. 
They are consecrated from the birth to Mammon and to Lust. 

The slave cannot be a Patriot, for he has no country. To him, 
Revolution is not change. It leaves him as it finds him, a slave. 
Its principles of liberty for which were pledged '' life, fortune, and 
sacred honor," work no deliverance for the slave. Those universal 
principles, " that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these 



8 

are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," though uttered as 
*' self-evident truths," and proclaimed to th^ world " from a decent 
respect to the opinions of mankind," * have not yet been heard in 
the house of bondage. No government contemplates the good of 
the slave. That Constitution, on whose front is written, " To es- 
tablish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common 
defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of 
LIBERTY," t is not broad enough to receive the slave on its founda- 
tions. No law is to him a shield. It allows him nothing to be pro- 
tected. Every department of government is his foe. Even the 
sanctuary of justice is no refuge from his wrongs. It is the citadel 
of his master's power. Whatever goes to make up a country for 
others, goes to make him an alien and an enemy. 

The SOUL of the slave is not his. It wears a chain, whose more 
than iron clanking bespeaks another owner. Ignorance is the 
strength of his chain. To know is to be free, for knowledge is 
power both to will and to do. 

Over THE AFFECTIONS of the slave the conquest is incomplete. 
There dominion cannot wholly come. There nature is often stron- 
ger than the iron hand of despotism. The Creator of man gave 
this mysterious power, to kill and to make alive — to be both captivi- 
ty and redemption. If they lead him captive at their will, they are 
also the earthquake to open his prison doors. The love of liberty 
may be smothered, but it is unquenchable fire. The love of kin- 
dred is not extinguished in the bosom of the slave. Some have, in- 
deed, been bold enough to affirm that the slave is without natural 
atiection ; — that the mother does not refuse to be comforted when 
her children are not. If such is the condition of the slave, alas! 
how wide and dreary is the desolation of his bosom ! How utter 
the ruin of that curse which breaks the image of God, by casting 

* Declaration of American Independence, 
t Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. 



it down, from a little lower than the angels, beneath the degrada- 
tion of the brute ! But he has affections. If he is forbidden to 
cherish them ; if the objects on which they yearn are torn from him ; 
if he is compelled to harden his heart in his own bosom, he cannot 
make it altogether as an adamant. 

The religion of good will to men— the glad tidings of great 
joy which shall be unto all people— that gospel which makes its 
ministers debtor to the wise and the unwise, to barbarian, Scythian, 
bond and free, is not the slave's. The page of God's truth and 
man's best hope, is shut up from his eyes. He may not read in his 
own tongue the wonderful works of God. The candle of the Lord 
which should be put upon a table, that it may give light to them that 
are in the house, is as the dark lantern that helps the robber in his 
deed of plunder, and keeps the plundered unconscious of the work 
of desolation. The power of God unto salvation, is made the pow- 
er of man to destroy. When the word of God is dealt out to the 
slave at all, it is by piecemeal, and by those fragments which are 
used to make faster his chain. 

Slavery is, by necessity of its nature, jealous, rapacious, vindic- 
tive, implacable. It is a denial of all right ; an infliction of all 
wrong. Conscious of wrong, and, therefore, of weakness and dan- 
ger, it seeks to sustain itself by new inflictions of wrong. Freedom, 
mind, virtue, truth, the light of religion, the righteous government 
of God, are objects of its jealousy and hatred. It holds with them 
no part, no communion, no concord. It arrogates dominion at all 
times, in all places, and over all things. It usurps authority in the 
walks of literature, in the mart of commerce, at the domestic fire- 
side, in the hall of legislation, in the temple of justice, in the house 
of God. It breaks into the sanctuary of home, it violates the natu- 
ral and chartered right of petition ; it restrains the liberty of speech ; 
it invades the freedom and destroys the existence of the press ; it 
drives woman from the foot of the cross ; it lays its ruthless hand on 
2 



10 

the altar of God, and on liim who is ministering at its lioly fire; it 
proclaims virtuous freemen outlaws, and offers, by statute, a boun- 
ty on their heads : it inflicts the lash on free citizens, ihr no crime, 
without trial, or only the cruel mockery of its shadow ; and, at last, 
to seal its guilt v.ith blood, butchers, with deliberate malice, the no- 
blest son of freedom, on freedom's own soil. 

Such is slavery : such arc its crimes. And has it so much to do 
against man, against us, and we nothing to do v.ilh it? Shall such 
a foe to heaven and earth dwell quietly in our land ? Shall free- 
men, whose liberty was bought with their country's sufferings and 
their father's blood, tamely bear such arrogance and such outrage ? 
Shall the charm of Union outlive the charm of Liberty? of man- 
hood ? of honor? of virtue ? of reverence to God? of all which un- 
ion contemplates as a blessing! None cherishes the union more 
than we. None is more firmly persuaded that the union has every 
thing to hope for from freedom, and every thing to dread from 
slavery. Let the union live. Let it outlive every thing but the 
good for V;hich it was framed. 

Slavery ought never to have been ; and we believe in the duty 
and safety of its immediate abolition. We believe in the duty, be- 
cause slavery is the violation of /w^wM^aZ/Ze rights *' — because for the 
continuance of sin there is no warrant in the law of God, We be- 
lieve that, in this respect, all sin stands on the same footing, and 
that permission to continue in any sin is an abrogation of all law, 
and the bringing of confusion into the whole government of God. 

We believe in the safdij of immediate abolition of slavery, as it 
would be derogatory to the goodness of God to offer discouragement 
to duty as the rule of his providence ; and because the Divine gov- 
ernment is ordained to promote the well-being of the governed by 
their obedience to its laws. — We believe that a denial to man of the 

* Ry the eternal principles of natural justice,, no master has a right to hold his slave 
in bondage for a single hour. Speech of \A'ii-i.i.mm Tinkney, in the Marvland House 
of Dcleg^alcs, 1789. 



11 

attributes and claims of humanity is an invitation to resist that deni- 
al ; — that v.'hen such an affront is offered to nature, it will seek, and 
will create opportunities to resist and to punish such affront ; and that 
to expect its forbearance is to hope that nature will not be true to 
itself, or that grace will find ends without first finding means. We 
believe that, as a denial to man of the attributes and claims of hu- 
manity is the provocation and the beginning of a curse, so the allow- 
ance of them is the invitation and the entrance of a blessing. But we 
are not left to deductions from abstract principles, to learn that the 
doing of duty is safe. It is the testimony of God that Righteousness 
cxalteth a nation ; and it is the promise of God to a people, that 
when it shall loose the bands of wickedness, undo the heavy burden, 
let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke, tlieii shall its 
light break forth as the morning, and its health shall spring forth 
speedily. That men may not be faithless, but believing, that they 
may have strong consolation in fleeing to duty, the promise of reve- 
lation has its fulfilment in the open providence of God. Before the 
face of all people, and under the eyes of this nation, God is now 
holding forth a specimen of his doings, to show that the principles 
of his government, the constitution of nature, and the movements of 
his providence, are all in the same wise and beneficient hand. 

Shall we be kept from interposing in behalf of humanity, by the 
cry, that to speak for the slave is to fasten closer his chain, and to 
aggravate his sufferings? Doubtless the severities of his bondage 
are increasing, but the cause is In slavery itself It is in vain to 
hope that time, advancing civilization, or even the meek and benign 
power of religion, will soften the rigors of slavery. Utterly to 
cease, or to become more cruel, are its only alternatives. The 
conscience of the slaveholder may, for a little time, be soothed by 
the dream that increasing severities are the effect of agitating the 
subject of slavery, in the free States ; and that, without this agita- 
tion, its wonted severities would bo mitigated ; but this dream will 



12 

quickly pass away. If the voice of faithful and friendly remon- 
strance be not heard, the stronger cries of the slave, in the despe- 
rate energy of nature's struggle, will v/ake him from that dream. 
They will teach him that, as the slave and the master are enemies 
by necessity, so, in the government of man, fear is the only substi- 
tute for affection. They will assure him, that the measure of this 
fear must be proportionate to the power of the slave, and that, by 
an immutable law, the power of the slave must increase, and the 
power of the master diminish. 

Shall then a false hope or an unmanly fear stifle our voice ? 
Shall slavery inflict its wrongs ; shall this enemy of all righteous- 
ness stalk through the land, and the followers of a holy religion 
have no voice to rebuke it? Shall the consecrated ministers of 
God halt between two opinions ? Shall their lips be cold ? Or, 
rather, shall not the unseen messengers of heaven touch their lips 
as with live coals from ofT the Lord's altar, and make them flames 
of fire to consume this enemy of God and man? Do we not won- 
der and grieve that our enslaved countrymen have so long called in 
vain for our intercession with God, and our remonstrance with 
man ? — that over such a cause we have slept so long and so deep 
a sleep? — that, for the oppressed and helpless, we have thought so 
little, felt so little, done no more ? Shall we not redeem the time, 
knowing that the days are evil ? That which is ours to do, let us 
do, quickly, fearlessly, perseveringly, looking for wisdom and 
strength to Him who has an arm of might and mercy, to deliver 
the oppressed and save a guilty land. 



HI 



